ERP consulting is a rewarding career option for MBAs

Management graduates with a few years of work experience can have a very successful career in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) consulting.



With market forces working positively for almost all industries, large and midsize clients across geographies are at their peak of performance and are supporting each other in bridging demand and supply gap. The resource management and optimisation needs have fuelled appreciation of ERP at work. As per estimates, the market for ERP software will reach almost $50 billion by 2011.

An ERP system allows integrating engineering, customer services, planning, materials, manufacturing, finance and human resources across a single facility or across multiple locations. Manufacturing traditionally makes up the largest share of ERP spending but its share now stands challenged from sectors such as retail, real estate, telecom, finance and healthcare.

With most of the large enterprises across sectors being supported by global ERP applications like SAP, Oracle, People Soft, JD Edwards and others, the growing midsize sector -- already competing in the global market and being influenced by their larger partners -- is realising the RoI an enterprise solution can bring to it.

Every business decision-maker realises that his or her enterprise relies upon resources and that planning is essential to optimise how those resources are acquired, allocated and used. Over the next few years it will be difficult to operate and tap new opportunities globally if a company is not running its business enabled by an ERP solution.




With enterprise solution as a fundamental to businesses across the globe, there are multitudes of opportunities offering highly rewarding career to those aspiring career in ERP.

In the current environment there is a greater opportunity for us to choose an appropriate career path in ERP, at a very early stage of our career. For management graduates coming from finance, commerce or technical background there are a host of opportunities as ERP covers all the facets of business, whether it is finance, materials management, project management, CRM, production planning, sales or human capital management.

One can start a career as a domain specialist and progress through to service delivery and leadership role. Besides domain specialisation, the nature of one's contribution can help one understand the functioning of the entire resource planning process. A good enterprise solution can help one innovate, adapt and manage the scale and spectrum of business needs.

The typical ERP professional has the option of transitioning his/her career across the organisational functions. In addition, with inroads made by players such as SAP and Microsoft in the growing midsize businesses, ERP professionals have the flexibility to contribute to different size of businesses, either large or small, in India or abroad, as the core functionalities and the usage of a particular enterprise solution remains the same globally.



A management graduate who aspires for a career in ERP should possess strong subject knowledge of the domain he/she wants to specialise in. The keyword is enterprise -- an ERP software system should potentially address most of the critical processes and functional areas of the company.

To become a successful ERP consultant, let's say in material management, besides having theoretical knowledge, the person should have hands-on experience and should have worked for at least 2-3 years in roles offering material planning and material management. While strong fundamentals is the basic strength required to tackle unique problem situations, it is the practical experience of execution that makes one an expert at doing so.

Looking at the hiring trend of the past few years, most of the IT consulting firms, global and domestic alike, including ours, have strong demand for ERP consultants and offer attractive compensation, and a lot of exposure to Indian as well as global markets.

Source: The Financial Express

Relief for CAT aspirants: Prometric to release 'test' paper

To familarise CAT aspirants with the online format of the examination, Prometric, entrusted with the task of conducting it, will soon be releasing a 'practice test' paper.



The 'practice test' has been designed to provide a comprehensive overview of what to expect on the day of the examination for admissions to Indian Institutes of Management.

"The practice test will be available on www.catiim.in in about a couple of weeks to familiarise candidates with the navigation and functionality of the CAT," managing director of Prometric India Soumitra Roy said.



There will be a tutorial followed by 12 sample questions in the practice test and the candidates can take it as many times they wish.

The sample questions in the practice test would, however, not be representative of the content or difficulty level of the actual test, he said.

"We came across several candidates last year who had some difficulty in handling the online mode of the CAT test due to lack of exposure," he said while highlighting the need for the practice test. He said the practice test has been designed with relevant inputs from the IIMs.

The tutorial will explain features like navigation around the screen, question number, on-screen timer, next button, previous button, mark button, review button and quit test button.




The CAT 2010 online test will be conducted in a staggered format starting from October 27 and ending on November 24. The last date for registration for the test is September 30. Assuring that CAT 2010 will be free of glitches and problems that had been encountered last year, Roy said they have even ensured back-ups in case of any hitch.

CAT 2009, held for the first time under the online format, was marred by technical glitches leading to the rescheduling of the examinations.




Roy said they are preparing 147 labs across 78 centres to conduct the CAT test. "The guarantee is that we will test the candidates within the testing window period," he said.

He said a set of videos have been also uploaded in youtube for the benefit of candidates. The videos contain registration and scheduling, test day procedure, test format and CAT scoring process among others.

He said they are halfway through the registration process and it has been "absolutely flawless" so far.

Source: Indian Express